1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808352503321

Titolo

Women and children first [[electronic resource] ] : feminism, rhetoric, and public policy / / edited by Sharon M. Meagher and Patrice DiQuinzio

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Albany, : State University of New York Press, c2005

ISBN

0-7914-8285-5

1-4237-4763-1

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

vii, 263 p

Collana

SUNY series in gender theory

Altri autori (Persone)

DiQuinzioPatrice <1955->

MeagherSharon M

Disciplina

305.42/01

Soggetti

Feminist theory

Canada Social policy

United States Social policy 1993-

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front Matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Women and Children First -- (Mis)representations of the Domestic Sphere: State Interventions -- Homeland Security and the Co-optation of Feminist Discourse -- Unsanctioned (Bedroom) Commitments: The 2000 U.S. Census Discourse around Cohabitation and Single-Motherhood -- Enemies of the State: Poor White Mothers and the Discourse of Universal Human Rights -- Medical Discourses and Social Ills -- Fixing Sex: Medical Discourse and the Management of Intersex -- Social Melancholy, Shame, and Sublimation -- Subjects of Violence -- Predators and Protectors: The Rhetoric of School Violence -- Battered Woman Syndrome: Locating the Subject Amidst the Advocacy -- Mothers, Good and Bad: Marginalizing Mothers and Idealizing Children -- Bad Mothers as “Brown” Mothers in Western Canadian Policy Discourse: Substance-Abusing Mothers and Sexually Exploited Girls -- Behind Bars or Up on a Pedestal: Motherhood and Fetal Harm -- Protesting Mothers: Politics under the Sign of Motherhood -- (M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War -- Love and Reason in the Public Sphere: Maternalist Civic Engagement and the Dilemma of Difference --



Contributors -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

This diverse collection explores the rhetoric of a wide range of public policies that propose "to put women and children first," including homeland security, school violence, gun control, medical intervention of intersex infants, and policies that aim to distinguish "good" from "bad" mothers. Using various feminist philosophical analyses, the contributors uncover a logic of paternalistic treatment of women and children that purports to protect them but almost always also disempowers them and sometimes harms them. This logic is widespread in contemporary popular policy discourse and affects the way that people understand and respond to social and political issues. Contributors rethink basic philosophical assumptions concerning subjectivity, difference, and dualistic logic in order to read the rhetoric of contemporary public policy discourse and develop new ways of talking and acting in the policy domain.